PRIF support is available to the current PRIF partner countries - Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

PRIF provides assistance to Pacific island countries for infrastructure activities through:

1. Advisory and technical assistance [through the Pacific Infrastructure Advisory Centre (PIAC)]: sector-wide analysis, strategy formulation, priority identification and project formulation; and
    
2. Investment in infrastructure projects: project design and development and both capital and recurrent costs.

PRIF aims to provide infrastructure support to Pacific island countries that is flexible, responsive, demand-driven and simple to access. Assistance aims to improve the quantity and quality of their economic infrastructure in the following sub-sectors:

• Energy (eg. electricity supply, renewable energy) 
• Telecommunications (eg. IT networks; water supply; sanitation and sewerage; solid waste disposal)
• Transport - land, sea, air (eg. roads, bridges, ports, airports)
• Waste management (eg. solid waste disposal, landfill gas recovery)
• Water and Sanitation (eg. water supply, water sources, dams, sanitation and sewerage, irrigation and drainage)

In addition to TA and investment assistance, PRIF provides the following services:

1. Advisory services;
2. Knowledge hub; and
3. Coordinated assistance.

1.  Advisory services

As part of the development of PRIF, Pacific island country governments advised the PRIF partners that a "one stop shop" for technical advice related to infrastructure would be of great benefit. Based on this advice, the PRIF partners have established the Pacific Infrastructure Advisory Centre (PIAC) to provide advice on the abovementioned economic infrastructure sub-sectors.
PIAC can assist Pacific island countries in a number of ways including:

• Providing technical assistance aimed at addressing particular infrastructure needs across five sectors - energy, telecommunications, transport, waste management, and water and sanitation.
• Supporting the development of sector roadmaps
• Building capacity to improve sector planning, budgeting, investment, regulations, and maintenance provision
• Assisting countries in their management of donor infrastructure support through improved coordination mechanisms.

PIAC is also intended to help establish, from the outset, the credibility of the PRIF as a new way of doing business. As such, PIAC will be able to offer a range of services depending on demand, but will focus on performing the following functions:

• Engagement and communication with countries about their infrastructure priorities;
• Identification of country level needs across sectors;
• Responses to country requests and provision of monthly updates to the Infrastructure Working Group on how these requests have been handled;
• Provision of input into the development and review of PRIF pipeline projects;
• Provision of on-call technical expertise, including a help-desk role, around key sub-sectors;
• Development of a network of the various PRIF partner resources that can be tapped; and
• Support for activities that will prepare the roll out of PRIF through improved sectoral planning and budgeting.

PIAC will work closely with Pacific island countries and the PRIF partner agencies as well as regional organisations, non-government organisations, community-based organisations, power sector associations, and private sector bodies.
Wherever possible, PIAC will use existing mechanisms/resources/capacity to address issues as they arise.

For further assistance PIAC can be contacted by emailing piac@theprif.org or via telephone on +61 2 8270 9416.

Click here for more information about how to request technical assistance from PIAC.

2.  Knowledge hub

PRIF aims to establish, maintain and progressively extend a readily-accessible central reference point for access to information on:

• Pacific infrastructure and its financing, including data on current standards of Pacific island country infrastructure services, how they are financed and by whom, and current infrastructure service standards;
• Good practice in infrastructure planning and management;
• Other networks aimed at strengthening access to infrastructure services; and
• PRIF activities, procedures and funding allocations.

PRIF aims to ensure close liaison and coordination with all development and country partners so that information, knowledge and lessons learned from all activities and stakeholders is collated and shared appropriately, in and beyond the region.

3.  Coordinated assistance

The PRIF partners are committed to coordinating development partner activities and aligning these with country development strategies and country government systems for the planning, delivery and implementation of infrastructure services. PRIF aims to simplify and streamline advisory and funding process to reduce transaction costs for Pacific island countries.

PRIF aims to blend bilateral grant funding with funding from the MDBs, country partners and/or private sector equity/loan funding to finance the ‘whole of life’ costs of providing infrastructure services at sustainable standards as agreed between individual Pacific island countries and the PRIF development partners.

The balance between PRIF funding of asset creation and maintenance respectively will vary from one country to another and will differ between different infrastructure sub-sectors. Strengthening of PRIF country partners’ capacity to plan, manage and deliver the operations and maintenance of infrastructure assets – including the capacity of their private sectors to supply infrastructure services – requires stable, long-term commitment from development and country partners.